Some Thoughts After my First Big Release
It’s summer time in Sweden, which means a lot of people is going on well-deserved breaks. For me it’s one more week before I go on my vacation.
This whole mid-year break time has put me on the reflective mood, thinking how already the first half of this year has gone by, and what has taken place during the first 6 months of 2022.
Professionally, one of the main things that come to mind is: I had my first big release! For the first time since I started working as a developer, my code was going to see the light.
There was a minor, tiny release in between, where my very first line of code went into production (memorable celebration moment 🥳)… but this time we are talking about big features and a whole CMS revamp where a high percentage of the code was written by yours truly.
On this post I want to reflect on some thoughts post big release. As someone who’s getting started in the industry, I think it can be easy to overlook big wins and keep focused on that path of trying to prove yourself and impress everyone.
I’m going to use this tweet from Jen Simmons, Member of the CSS Working Group, as a reference:
Yes, I make websites, and there are several things about my first release that I am proud of… super proud! 💪
During this development period I was given a lot of freedom to try things out and a big amount of trust to code things on my own. Personally, I think this is one of the best ways to learn: when you figure something out mostly on your own and the brain makes that click! It gives a significant confidence boost and increases the belief in your skills, making you more independent.
This was a result of having a super amazing mentor/Senior and team, who I could always run things by, discuss approaches and request code reviews from.
One moment that helped close the circle was meeting my client and hearing from them all the positive feedback they got from customers after testing our release.
We spend all this time behind the screen developing something and looking at it every day, yet we are quite disconnected from the end user. How they use our product, what all these improvements mean to them, or how they react to them… Are they super impressed? Do they love/hate that dragging new feature I added that took me ages to nail down?
I find it super valuable having a client who comes to us and explains what happens on the other side of the project. This revamped CMS ended up being faster, clearer and easier to use, and with remarkable UI/UX improvements.
It took some time to get there, but the value this revamped tool is adding to the customer experience is priceless.
Hearing this feedback made me understand how meaningful the work is. Even when it can feel like just writing code in a dark screen, all of it translates into one satisfied customer who loves our product and generates value to my client.
Post-release period has been a great reminder that this remains a work in progress. Developing a tool is not something that eventually gets finished at a certain moment, yet it is necessary to set clear goals and milestones not to lose ourselves in the process.
This is me taking a moment to reflect, celebrate, deep breaths and then get back to it.
Months later, there is obviously customer feedback and the requests for fixes or improvements start coming in.
It is quite entertaining looking at my code from back then (mainly developed during 2021) and see how much of a super-achiever I was, attempting complex things and making them work (Vanessa from the past impresses me!). And at the same time look at solutions I can probably write in a more efficient way nowadays.
The ownership feeling is stronger now when I look at features I developed mostly on my own, yet the challenge remains knowing that if I was able to do that in the past, I should be able to grow and accomplish even more in the future.
But! One thing at a time: countdown to vacay-cay started, before deep diving into The Matrix once again 😎🌴🌞~~
